For the 16th straight year, readers of Investment Advisor have chosen their Broker/Dealers of the Year in balloting at www.investmentadvisor.com. Nearly 5,000 representatives of independent broker/dealers judged their own broker/dealers in 15 separate areas-from the quality of home office personnel to technology support-and those broker/dealers that gained the highest composite scores were awarded the honors in four different divisions based on the number of producing reps. The winning B/Ds–three of whom are first-time winners, while the other can boast a multiyear winning streak–will be profiled in Investment Advisor's September issue, and the presidents of the winning firms have agreed to serve on the newly formed Investment Advisor Broker/Dealer Advisory Board for the next 12 months, helping guide the magazine's coverage of the thriving independent B/D industry.
The 2006 Broker/Dealers of the Year are:
Division I (for broker/dealers with up to 199 producing reps): Contemporary Financial Solutions. Based in West Palm Beach and led by group president Scott Yamamura, this relatively young firm (founded in 2002) and a subsidiary of Pacific Life Insurance Company gained its first-ever Broker/Dealer of the Year honor through the high marks given by its reps for the quality of the home office's communications with reps and for its internal trading platform.